(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 28 November 2025 16:30, UK
It’s no secret that most of the best Tom Petty songs are about love and heartache.
In fact, most of his peers leaned into the same trope, writing from the heart about what they knew best, whether it came from the resilience of letting themselves be in love or the heartbreak that came with relationships that crashed and burned. Petty was no different, often pouring his experiences into songs that would eventually become some of the most timeless songs in history.
This was often the case when he worked with others, too. For instance, ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ – one of Stevie Nicks’ most career-defining songs post-Fleetwood Mac – was inspired by the feeling of relationship fatigue when someone starts to weigh you down. The lyrics, written by Petty, cite as much: “You come knocking on my front door / Same old line you used to use before / And I said, ‘Yeah, well, what am I supposed to do? / I didn’t know what I was getting into.’”
Another time that Petty crossed musical paths with Nicks would be a song that she wouldn’t end up singing on at all. The idea for ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ apparently initially came one night when Nicks had just broken up with Eagles’ Joe Walsh. She invited Eurythmics’ David Stewart over to hers for a party after their gig, but he’d decided to excuse himself to bed when others in attendance disappeared to take some cocaine.
At some point during their antics, Nicks had reportedly muttered the words, “don’t come around here no more”, though it’s not clear whether it was before or after Stewart woke up randomly to the image of her trying on Victorian clothing, like he was out of it in the middle of some sort of trip. Either way, Stewart later recorded a demo of the song, which at the time was just a handful of arrangements and no lyrics.
Nicks stepped back in to write some lyrics, but apparently they weren’t suitable for the song, and so Petty eventually entered the studio to finish it. One day, when Nicks was away from the recording studio, they recorded a version of the song with her backup vocalists, Marilyn Martin, Stephanie Spruill, and Sharon Celani. When she returned, she felt that the song was no longer hers, and so those singing backup stayed on the real version.
Nicks remained a major aspect of the theme and concept, however, as Stewart previously compared her Victorian clothing-antics to a scene from Alice in Wonderland. This became a theme of the music video, mirroring the earlier disarray experienced by Stewart that hinged on some kind of unexpected psychedelic experience.
Stewart was also thinking about their encounter with Nicks when he recorded the initial demo, and channelled that aura into the instrumental. As he reflected, “I really liked Stevie, and she seemed vulnerable and fragile when I was leaving that morning. I was thinking about that and the situation she was in, and I started singing, ‘Don’t come around her no more.’”
Therefore, while she ended up being absent from the final recording, she very much remained a crucial presence, a foundational anchor that sparked the entire idea to begin with. What’s more, had Petty not become so possessive over it during the sessions, it’s said it may have ended up on Nicks’ Rock A Little, making her exclusion from the entire process a definitive near-miss.
Related Topics